Project 2.

Project 1.

Documentary Photography.

Your first words.

KOUD.

MELK.

MIJ.

DRINKEN.

WAAR.

GROOT.

All it took was some hairs on your chest, then you are not a boy anymore, you are a man.
My brother turned 19 in February, I asked him: “when are you a man?” he answered me: “when you can drive a car.” After that conversation I wondered, I wondered, he knows how to drive a car, but is he a man? Is there a point in society when boys turn in to man or does it happen without noticing?
In this documentary series, I am capturing my brother in his transition of becoming a man. The pictures are mostly intimate, not like a diary, showing the small, banal moment of his daily life. The series of photos is focused on playing, acting, intensity, questioning and vulnerability.

Collaboration with Zeeger Carpaij

I wonder if my brother could fight a bear.

My cousin has a daughter, she is two years old and starting to speak. I think she already has the vocabulary to speak, because she understands me when I speak to her. A couple of months ago, she started trying to talk, no one knew what she meant, but
it was a start. And, now, since a couple of weeks, she actually speaks with real words. The sentences are not always right, or the words she uses are not always placed in the right context but it is moving to see how fast she learns. Your first words, is a project about the first words my cousin’s daughter is learning to use. She learns by trial and error, she takes over everything the people around her are saying, she builds up a whole network of links between words and meanings in her brain. A network of links that she will use the rest of her live to interact. By translating her first words into colors, I visualize the links of the language network that she is building up. Every word has a meaning, every word has a color.

Collaboration with: Wulfilin Fosfor Falkovna Kurpershoek.